The Little Door

Somewhere down a dirt road in south Alabama

The ditch told me to quit throwing rocks.

“That one nearly came through my window!”

We lived in a white trailer with a green stripe. We had a big yard, way bigger than our home needed. There were pecan trees and pine trees all around, and a mimosa tree with pink, silky blooms grew by the porch. A ditch ran along the road out front. Where the driveway crossed it, the water went through a big cement pipe.

School had just let out, and no other children lived on our road. I was already bored.

So I sat on the edge of the ditch, threw rocks, and watched them plop into the slow-moving, shallow stream.

Mama could see me from the kitchen window. She had told me to stay where she could see me, and to watch out for snakes.

She never told me what to do if the ditch talked to me.

“Who said that?”

“Your neighbor!”

I looked down toward the pipe, and something moved under a fan of pine straw.

A piece of bark swung open.

Behind it stood a little person.

He was about as tall as a fork from our kitchen drawer, wearing brown pants and a blue-and-white checkered shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Dark, curly hair like mine stuck up on top and out around his ears. And he was frowning at me.

I slid down the bank and landed in the sand.

“Well,” he said. “At least you’ve stopped throwing rocks at my house.”

“Are you real?”

He looked down at himself.

“I was when I got up this morning.”

I moved closer on my knees. The piece of pine bark was a door. It fitted into a crack in the bank beside the pipe. It swung on two little loops of silver wire, and its handle was a bent piece of the same wire. Pine straw hung down over the top like a roof, and a green vine grew down one side.

Next to the door was a little window, about the size of a saltine cracker.

Two flat stones made a tiny doorstep.  

“Do you live in there?”

“Yes.”

“All by yourself?”

“Yes.”

“What’s your name?”

He stuffed his hands in his pockets.

“I haven’t needed one,” he said. “Not until you asked.”

“I’ll think of one for you,” I said.

“Take your time.”

“I’m Annie.”

“I heard. Somebody hollers it out that window all day.”

As if she had been waiting for her turn, Mama called, “Annie! Come wash your hands!”

“Will you be here tomorrow?”

He looked back into his house.

“I expect so. All my things are here.”

* * *

At supper, I told Mama and Daddy about him.

Daddy was shaking salt onto his butter beans.

“How big did you say?”

I floated my hand above the table.

“Little guy,” Daddy said. 

“He lives beside the pipe. He has a door.”

Mama smiled at Daddy over my head.

“He’s real,” I said.

* * *

The next morning, I took him a piece of biscuit wrapped in a napkin.

I knelt at the pipe and tapped the bark door with my finger. 

There was a scraping sound.

Then it opened.

“I brought you breakfast.”

“Oh, nice! Thank you, ma’am.”

He broke off a crumb and ate it standing in the doorway, then carried the rest inside. 

From where I lay on my stomach in the sand, I could see inside his house.

It went back into the bank alongside the pipe. A root curved across the ceiling. His bed was an open cigar box with a piece of lime green fabric draped over a chunk of blue foam. His table was a jar lid turned upside down on a flat stone, and his chair was made of Popsicle sticks.

A playing card was tacked to the wall like a picture. The joker.

By his bed stood a birthday candle, burned down to a stub. 

A feather hung beside the door.

“What’s that for?”

“Sweeping.”

“Your chair’s crooked.”

“So is your head from down here.” He smiled and winked at me. 

“I know your name,” I said.

He opened his eyes wide, waiting.

“Wink.”

He pursed his lips and nodded. “Okay. I think I like it.”

* * *

After that, I went down to see Wink nearly every day.

I brought him food some days. Other days, I just sat on the bank while he worked outside his door.

Wink was always doing something to his house. He patched the roof with clay. He straightened his doorstep. Once I found him scraping mud off the shell of a box turtle, who held very still for it.

Pepper, our gray tabby cat, started coming down to the ditch with me. She would lie on the bank with her nose an inch from his door and purr.

“She likes you,” I said.

“I don’t know about that,” he said.  

But she was very gentle, and he eventually let her rub her nose against him when he sat outside with me.

After a hard rain, the ditch water rose up, and little minnows came flickering through from somewhere up the road.

“Do you eat them?” I asked.

Wink looked at me as if I had said something rude.

“They’re neighbors.”

“Then what do you eat?”

“Pecans and honeysuckle, mostly.”

* * *

One morning I found him trying to take a bath in the water inside the cement pipe. 

“You need a bathtub.”

At home, I asked Mama if we had anything little that would hold water.

“What for?”

“Wink needs a bath.”

“That makes two of you.”

But she opened the cabinet above the refrigerator and took down an old sugar bowl. It was white, with blue flowers around the side. The lid was gone.

“Would this suit him?”

I filled it with some warm water and carried it down in both hands.

I set it on a flat patch of sand beside his door. I brought him a scrap of washcloth, too, and a crumb of bar soap I’d pinched off with my fingernail. 

Wink smiled and walked around it.

He looked inside.

“Well?” I asked.

“It’s a nice tub.”

I turned around because he insisted.

For a while I heard splashing.

“Is it all right?”

“It’s just right.”

Then he said, “Annie?” 

“What?”

“Thank you.”

I looked back just once.

He was sitting in the sugar bowl with his arms resting on the rim, looking so pleased with himself that I had to put my hand over my mouth to keep from giggling.

Afterward, he draped the washcloth over a rock to dry.

I left the sugar bowl with him.

* * *

One afternoon, I gave my Barbie a haircut with my school scissors.

I carried her down to the ditch, holding her behind my back. 

Wink tilted his head and studied her blonde hair.

“What happened?”

“She wanted short hair.”

“Did she, now.”

“It won’t grow back, will it?”

“I doubt it.” 

I sat down in the grass. Pepper came and sat by my feet.

Wink went inside. When he came back, he had a tiny pair of scissors.

“Set her right here,” he said, pointing to a flat spot in front of his house.

She was wearing her cheerleading outfit. I folded her into an L shape and sat her down for him.  

He walked around her, hopping over her outstretched legs, snipping a little here and a little there, and stepping back to look.

When he was done, her hair came just to her chin, even all the way around, with the ends turned under.

“It’s short,” I said.

“It’s on purpose now,” Wink said. “That’s the difference. I think she likes it.”

At supper, Mama picked up my Barbie.

“Did you do this?”

“Wink did.”

Then she handed her back.

“Well,” she said. “Somebody did a nice job.”

* * *

One evening, Mama sat down on the porch step beside me.

“Annie, I’ve got something to tell you. There’s going to be a new baby. Around Christmas.”

I looked at her stomach.

“Where’s it going to sleep?”

“In your old crib, I expect.”

“Is it a girl?”

“We don’t know yet.” She rested her hand on my knee. “Your daddy and I thought you could help us by picking out a name.”

Nobody had ever asked me to name a baby before.

The next morning, I went straight down to the ditch and plopped down in the grass.

“Mama’s having a baby,” I said. “And I get to help name it!”

“A baby,” Wink said. “Well, that’s some happy news. Have you thought of anything?”

He sat down beside me and crossed his legs.

“What would you name a girl?” I asked.

“Petunia.”

I giggled.

“Maybe Skipper,” I said. “Like Barbie’s sister.”

“Hmm,” Wink said. “Any others?”

“I like Lucy.”

“Lucy,” he said. “That’s a nice name.”

“What would you name a boy?” I asked.

“Beauregard.”

I laughed and laughed until I flopped over in the grass.

“Charlie,” I said.

“Try them out loud,” Wink said. “See how they sound.”

“Lucy,” I said. “Charlie.”

“Both will sound nice hollered out a window.”

I lay there in the grass and said them over to myself.

Charlie.

Lucy.

“What if the baby doesn’t like the name I pick?”

“You didn’t seem worried about that when you named me.”

“Wink is a good name.”

“That is true.”

I picked up a pine needle and wrapped it around my finger.

“We don’t have to decide today, do we?”

“Not unless Christmas has moved up a few months.”

* * *

Toward the end of summer, Daddy came home with some news.

“The county’s coming Monday to put in a new pipe.”

I was sitting on the porch steps eating a banana.

“What pipe?”

“The one under the driveway. There’s a crack clear across the far end. One of these days the truck’s going to fall right into it.” 

I jumped up.

“They can’t take that one.”

“They have to, honey.”

“Somebody lives there.”

Daddy’s face softened.

“Oh. Your little friend.”

“He’ll lose his house.”

Daddy looked toward the ditch.

Then he patted my shoulder.

“You can find him another place.”

I went down to the ditch.

Wink was outside, scratching a toad between the eyes with a twig. The toad looked half asleep. 

I told him everything.

“They’re taking the whole pipe?”

“Yes.”

“And digging up the bank?”

“I think so.”

He went inside.

I waited, but he didn’t come back out.

* * *

That night, I thought about the baby getting my old crib. Then I thought of my dollhouse.

It had a yellow roof, a little family of wooden dolls, windows and a door on the front, and no wall in the back.

I carried it down to the ditch.

“You could live in this.”

Wink walked all the way around it. When he got to the back, he stopped.

“There’s a wall missing.”

“That’s so you can reach in.”

“That’s what worries me.”

Then he went to the front door and pushed against it.

It didn’t open.

“It’s painted on,” I said.

“Then how does anybody get in?”

I carried the dollhouse up to Daddy.

“He needs a back wall,” I said. “And a real door.”

“Particular fella.”

“Yes.”

Daddy found a piece of wood and his little saw.

I sat beside him while he worked. He nailed a new wall across the back. Then he cut out the painted door and hung it back on with two tiny hinges, so it opened and shut. 

I took the little family out and put them in a shoebox inside my closet.

“Where are we putting it?”

“Under the back steps. Where the rain won’t get in.”

Daddy tucked it up there, back against the wall. 

I swept it out with an old paintbrush and put a square of clean cloth on the floor.

Then I took a ruler down to the ditch.

Wink stood in his doorway.

“What’s that?”

“I need to measure your table.”

“Why?”

“Daddy fixed you a house. It’s my dollhouse, but it has four walls now. It’s under our back steps.”

“I’ve never lived in a dollhouse.”

“You can put your things in it.”

He looked past me toward the trailer.

He rubbed the doorframe with his thumb.

I wanted to tell him the new house was better. It was dry and square.

But Wink was looking at the little marks his fingers had left in the clay.

I sat down beside him.

We stayed like that a minute before I said, “You could bring your door.”

His eyes opened wide.

“Could I?”

“Daddy made one for the house. But you could take it off and put yours on.” 

Wink scratched his head, making his hair stick up even more.

“Let me think.”

* * *

On Sunday evening, there was a little pile of furniture outside Wink’s house.

His feather broom leaned against it.

The sugar bowl was empty and clean.

“Are you coming?” I asked.

“I’m packing.”

“Can I carry something?”

“I’ll manage.”

I stayed until the mosquitoes started biting.

Before I went in, I told him again where the dollhouse was.

“Under the back steps,” he said. “I remember.”

“I’ll leave the back light on.”

“All right.”

That night, it rained.

* * *

The trucks came early Monday. The noise woke me up.

I ran to the front window.

The driveway broke into chunks. A machine lifted the old pipe, and big clumps of dirt fell in.

I tried to see the spot where Wink’s door had been. 

The pipe swung around and blocked my view.

I thought about Wink carrying his furniture through the grass in the rain, and how far our back steps must seem to somebody his size.

I wished he had let me carry the sugar bowl.

Mama said to stay out of the men’s way, so I went out the back door to look for Pepper.

A line of little muddy marks, each one about the size of my thumbnail, came up out of the wet grass and went under the back steps, straight to the dollhouse.

I ran back inside and left a trail of red mud from the back door to the kitchen table.

Mama came in and stopped.

“Annie,” she said. “Look at this floor.”

“He’s here,” I said. “Wink moved in.”

Mama went to the back door and looked at the steps for a while.

She got a rag, wiped up my tracks, and went back to making breakfast.

She buttered a piece of bread, sprinkled it with cinnamon and sugar, and put it in the oven.

When it came out, she set it on a plate for me. Then she put one Cheerio on the edge of it.

“You tell your friend to wipe his feet.”

I carried my plate outside and sat down on the back steps.

Pepper was curled on the bottom step, her tail wrapped around her feet, watching the dollhouse.

Where Daddy’s door had been, a bark door stood open on its wire hinges. Daddy’s door leaned against the bottom step. 

Wink’s feather broom was propped beside his door. The sugar bowl sat inside the house now. 

Through the doorway, I could see the jar-lid table and the crooked chair. A mimosa bloom fanned out on the table.

Wink sat on his doorstep in his pajamas, untying a piece of string from around the shell of the box turtle.

“You moved in,” I said.

“Last night.”

“By yourself?”

“I hired a mover.” He pulled the string loose. “It was raining, so I let him stay over.”

The turtle started walking slowly away around the back of the dollhouse.

“Much obliged,” Wink called after him.

Then he turned back to me. “He owed me a favor.”

“What’s his name?”

“He didn’t say.”

“I’ll think of one,” I said.

“Take your time.”

I held out the Cheerio.

Wink took it in both hands.

“Thank you, ma’am. And tell your mama thank you, too.”

He tucked it under his arm and carried it inside. 

His muddy shoes were still beside the door.

I leaned down and called after him.

“Mama says wipe your feet.”

There was no answer.

“And she means it.”